Chapter 23 - The Neural Correlates of Cognitive Control and the Development of Social Behavior

Abstract

Abstract This chapter reviews the extant literature on the neural correlates of cognitive control across development, with an emphasis on relations to social behavior, motivation, and individual differences. Increasingly, researchers have sought to identify the subprocesses that make up cognitive control, with “monitoring” and “control instantiation” being the primary divisions of this construct, along with partitions based on the domains within which monitoring and control operate. In this chapter, we adopt this more nuanced approach to describing and understanding how the cognitive control system develops. Broadly, cognitive control has been found to develop nonlinearly, with rapid development across childhood and approaching maturity in adolescence. At the neural level, improvements in these abilities are generally associated with maturation of a frontoparietal network. Alongside such neurocognitive developments in cognitive control, changes in limbic-related motivation processes also exhibit stark developmental changes, particularly during the periadolescence period. In this chapter, we review the neurocognitive development of cognitive control and relations to motivation and social behavior. Additionally, how these functions differ across individuals, as a function of temperament and psychopathology, as well as cross-cultural variation, is reviewed.